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Cato University

July 27-29, 2017 • Newport Beach, CA

Cato University’s College of Economics is based on the conviction that economics shouldn’t be limited only to specialists. Economics is a way of thinking, a tool for decision-making, and a basis for action. It’s the necessary foundation for understanding government, business, and society generally.

Discussions by Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and top scholars and economics professors from Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the Cato Institute are designed to solidify your expertise on basic economic principles, and then help you apply those tools to today’s most pressing issues.

In this one-of-a-kind learning environment, you’ll join others from around the country who care about the direction of America and the world — individuals who aren’t content to let government experts or populist politicians direct “the economy,” but who want an economic order that’s based on freedom and justice and that delivers prosperity. Register here.

Schedule

Thursday, July 27

3:00 – 6:00PM

Registration

6:30 – 7:30PM

Reception

7:30 – 9:30PM

The Economics of Liberty and ProsperityModern widespread prosperity is made possible by respect for individual freedom – to think, to plan, to challenge old ways of doing things, to introduce new products and services, to be enterprising. How are liberty and shared prosperity closely connected?

The Power of IncentivesWhat is the impact of positive incentives? Free societies rely on the right incentives to foster peaceful cooperation and harmony. How can the wrong incentives, even imposed with the best of intentions, create truly perverse consequences?

Spontaneous OrdersMost of the order in human life wasn’t consciously foreseen, designed, or imposed; it just grew. Free societies include many islands of conscious planning, but the overall order of a free society isn’t planned. Organizations have purposes, but society has no one purpose.

The Economics of Cooperation and CoercionPeople can get what they want by persuasion or by violence. But, how does economics help us to understand each form of interaction: work and trade, on the one hand, and force and robbery, on the other?

Rational Choice and Public Policy AnalysisPublic choice has emerged to explain behavior in both markets and politics. To what extent do voters and consumers behave rationally, and how can a science largely germinated in the study of market exchange help to explain politics?

The Economics of Trade and the Politics of International TradeInternational trade accounting is often a source of confusion that can be clarified by systematically examining the terms involved. What are the political controls and the myths that concentrated interests use to restrict mutually beneficial exchange?

The Economic Analysis of Social PolicyEconomics doesn’t just illuminate and explain exchange of goods and services or voting behavior in political contests. How can it be used to explain other governmental policies and their consequences, from prohibition of drugs and alcohol to sexual behavior?

The Economics of KnowledgeThe knowledge needed for economic coordination is dispersed throughout society and not easily communicated. How have markets, prices, and other mechanisms evolved to allow people in free societies to benefit from such dispersed knowledge without having to centralize and master it all themselves?

Tom G. Palmer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and director of Cato University, the Institute’s educational arm. Palmer is also the executive vice president for international programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and is responsible for establishing operating programs in 14 languages and managing programs for a worldwide network of think tanks. Before joining Cato he was an H. B. Earhart Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford University, and a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. He frequently lectures in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, India, China and throughout Asia, and the Middle East on political science, public choice, civil society, and the moral, legal, and historical foundations of individual rights.

Jeffrey A. Miron is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. His area of expertise is the economics of libertarianism, with particular emphasis on the economics of illegal drugs. Miron has served on the faculty at the University of Michigan and as a visiting professor at the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T. and the Department of Economics, Harvard University. From 1992-1998, he was chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University. He is the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition and The Economics of Seasonal Cycles. Miron received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Swarthmore College in 1979 and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. in 1984.

Lynne Kiesling’s research focuses on the effect of regulatory institutions and their incentives on innovation and technological change, particularly in the electric power industry. She teaches classes in microeconomics, technological change, environmental economics, antitrust and regulation, environmental economics, and history of economic thought, and all of these topics and themes inform her research and other writing.

Dan Ikenson is director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, where he coordinates and conducts research on all manner of international trade and investment policy. Since joining Cato in 2000, Ikenson has authored dozens of papers on various aspects of trade policy, focusing his research on U.S.-China trade relations; bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and institutions; globalization; U.S. manufacturing issues; trade politics; and trade remedies, such as the antidumping regime.

Dr. Vernon L. Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his groundbreaking work in experimental economics. Dr. Smith is professor of economics at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center, all in Arlington, Virginia.

Lisa Conyers has traveled the globe to report on topics as varied as welfare dependence and its effects on recipients, the relationship between religiosity and criminal behavior, the role and prevalence of violence in civil society, and the impact of health and family planning programs in the developing world.